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The high-profile nature of thought leadership programs makes stakeholder navigation an essential success factor.

What is new: The complexity of stakeholder management for thought leadership programs grows with the scope and pace of market development.  

Why it matters: Arranging contexts, choosing strategic directions, and word-smithing flagship/critical messages is an iterative process with a delicate balance between what to include and what to reject.

Unite diverse groups: To maximize the impact of your thought leadership, you depend on contributions from diverse groups. This diverse talent base represents diverse interests from participating groups to cater to.

🧮 Thought leadership programs also span multiple levels in an organization, from the executive sponsor at the top to the subject matter experts doing the hard work—a reality that tests all involved communications and governance skills.

👥 The way you set up stakeholder management is a vital success factor, as important as the research you do and how you package insights into attractive assets. It all starts with clarifying all required roles and what each one is responsible for.

⛓ Established models to build from: Multiple well-established agile management models clarify roles and decision-making. These are well suited as a base for thought leadership programs:

• RACI matrix for project management centered around roles as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed.
• The DACI matrix for decision-making is focused on improving speed and quality in decisions across the roles of Driver, Approver, Contributor, and Informed.
• The RASCI matrix adds a supporter role to secure broad stakeholder anchoring in decision-making.

↔️ Your choice between these models depends on

• The scope of your program
• Your team’s maturity with agile methodologies
• The skills and experiences of potential driver/responsible.

The model I advocate is a modified version of the ones above.

• Executive sponsor – Making it explicit who you are accountable to and where governance takes place.
• Accountable – table stake
• Driver—A driver takes a more active role in shaping decisions than a responsible who is more focused on execution and follow-up. This role makes it easier for accountable people to deliver to executive sponsors.
• Contributors—The driver needs active contributors interested in securing high-quality outputs. Consulting roles are a bit weak.
• Supporters are crucial in anchoring the output across your organization for rapid execution.
• Informed – table stake.

💰 Executive sponsor: The nature of thought leadership initiatives requires an executive sponsor high up in the organization. A model with multiple sponsorships can build strong support across contributing organizations.

📃 Executive sponsors demand clarity in progress reporting and how investments lead to customer excitement in the insights you deliver.

↔️ Executive sponsors have the authority to make strategy decisions and approve directions for strategic initiatives and resource allocation. As part of this, they can approve the objectives and key results a thought leadership initiative will deliver.

⏫️ Expect governance and reporting to occur in strategic steering bodies, forums with close attention to addressing strategic questions and choices, and quarterly face-to-face meetings.

🪝 Accountable: The accountable is on the hook for executing a thought leadership program. Accountables provide clarity on scope, target outcomes, and deadlines in assignments.

The accountable have the authority to decide on all operational issues within the approved strategy and applicable guard rails.

Governance through operational steering bodies with monthly follow-ups is a good starting point.

🛞 Driver: The driver plays a vital role in the program. Driver traits to look for are:

• Deep market and customer understanding
• Personal drive and agile project management skills
• Connecting dots between contributions and establishing structures
• Personal brand recognition and external contact network
• Ability to formulate viewpoints in crisp and concise language

It is hard for any profile to match all the criteria above. One approach is to appoint your driver first and then compensate for skills gaps when staffing other positions in the team.

Agile management principles fit well with thought leadership programs. The driver manages the backlog and defines the scope of the bi-weekly development sprints.

Daily sprint calls can be too much, but weekly project meetings are required to drive progress.

🪢 Contributors: The contributors are part of a multi-disciplinary team. Your subject matter experts represent the required skill sets and key contributing organizations. Finding the balance between research and content creation/promotion characters is critical to success.

You need vital contributors to dedicate at least half their time to the program. More dedicated resources will be able to follow the pace and continuously risk missing milestones and quality targets.

Contributors support thought leadership programs on a project basis. Critical skills beyond their subject matter expertise are

• Familiar with the contribution quality that applies to thought leadership.
• Well-versed in agile ways of working.
• Great writing skills

🫶 Supporters: Supporters are key in anchoring thought leadership broadly across your organization, driving internal alignment, and increasing its external reach.

Your supporters can be influential SMEs in contributing organizations, sales team individuals with extensive customer contacts, and middle managers connected to the strategy realization

👂 Informed: Who and how you inform defines the reputation your thought leadership program gets internally. Inform broadly, and your staff will be proud and talk about it. Narrow information can result in a loss of interest.

Three steps in the information process are extra necessary:

• About the scope of initiatives before GO decisions
• Progress during development
• Pre-briefed before launch

🥘Kitchen cabinet: As outlined here, stakeholder management involves many people. As the driver, you need a kitchen cabinet to discuss and define the scope and evolve it in short increments.

You want to avoid the risk that a broad stakeholder group will slow progress and limit storytelling and messages to the lowest common denominator.

Additions reading suggestions:

• Manage stakeholders in thought leadership development [BLOPOST] –
• Five ways to build your thought leadership dream team [ARTICLE] – by Rob Mitchell, Financial Times
• DACI vs. RACI – 4 considerations [BLOGPOST] – by Heinz Marketing
• RACI Alternatives: Choices for navigating the efficient leadership [BLOGPOST] – by Digital Leadership AG  
• How to make significant decisions quickly [ARTICLE] – by Martin G. Moore, Harvard Business Review